Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

Yet with the end of day sadness comes.

He replied:

All are sad when the day ends,
Yet are you sadder than any —
You who wait?

I can sympathize with you and I am coming.

The next morning the frost was very white; he sent to inquire for her, asking, "How are you feeling now?" She sent a poem:

Not in repose was the night passed;
But the frosty morning
Brought its own charm,
Incomparable.

His answer contained many touching words, and a poem:

To think alone is [not life].
If you were thinking the same thoughts —

She answered:

You are you and I am I,
Yet between your heart and mine is no separation.
Make no such distinctions.

The lady caught cold. Though not serious she suffered. The Prince often inquired for her and at last she answered, saying:

A little better. The thread of life thinned down and it seemed to be going to break, but now it is dear to me because of you. Is it because I am deep in sin?

He wrote back:

Gladly do I hear it:
The thread of your life
Cannot easily be broken,
For it is tied together,
With pledges of long-enduring affection.

The end of the year was at hand. The first day of the Frost month seemed like a day of early spring, but the next morning it snowed. The Prince sent a poem:

Since the god-age it has snowed,
It is a known thing,
Yet that snow seems very fresh this morning!

She returned an answer:

First snow! I see it young every winter,
Yet my face grows old
As Winter comes.

Days were passed in exchanging these nothings. Again his letter:

I become impatient to see you, and just now wanted to go to you, but my friends have met here to compose poems together.

She wrote:

Had you no time to come?
Then I would go to you.
O that I knew { an even way of love.
{ the art of composing poems.

He was pleased.

Come to my house. Here is the even way and here's the way to see each other.

That night he visited her, and talked touchingly of many things. "Would you be sad," he said, "if I should desert my house and become a monk?" He spoke sadly, and she wondered why such a thought had entered his mind, and whether it could be true or not. Overcome with melancholy she wept. Outside was tranquil rain and snow: they slept not at all, but talked together with feeling throughout the night as if the world were all forgotten. She felt that his affection was deeper than she had suspected. He seemed to feel everything in her, and could sympathize with her every emotion. In that case she could accomplish her determination from the beginning [to go to become a nun]. So she made up her mind, but said nothing and sat lamenting. He saw her feeling and said:

Lovers' fancy of a moment held us both through the night,

And she continued:

Tears came to their eyes,
And without was the rain.

In the morning he talked of merrier things than usual, and went back. Though she had no faith in it [i.e. the convent], yet she had been thinking of it to comfort her solitude. Now her mind was confused, trying to think how to realize it, and she told her perplexed feeling to the Prince:

On waking I cannot think.
I wish that those were only dreams [of which we talked last night].

And on the margin she wrote:

We made our vows so earnestly,
Yet must these vows yield
To the common fate of the changing world.

I am sorry to think of it.

The Prince read it and made answer:

I wanted to write to you first —

I will not think it real,
Those sad things were only dreams
Dreamed in a night of dreams.

I wish that you would think so too. You dwell too much upon nothing.

Only life is fickle: